French Country Recipe Box

Tips on making decorative boxes to hold your recipes.

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Project by Erin Stevens from Hermitage, Tenn.

Erin Stevens, a busy mom and energetic artist, discovered the art of stamping just two years ago, and it has changed her life. Along with beautiful greeting cards, Stevens has discovered many great venues for her stamping skills. Stevens takes a plain hinged, wooden box and applies stamped decoupage to the exterior to make a decorative recipe box, and then using four funky stamping techniques creates some fabulous interior recipe dividers.

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3. Apply a thin coat of decoupage glue with a sponge brush to one section of the box. Cut a piece of the stamped dress pattern to fit that section of the box and lay it on the box. Apply more decoupage glue to the top of the dress pattern section and smooth it out with the sponge brush. Cover the entire box and let it dry.

4. Hot-glue the gingham ribbon around the edge of the lid of the box.

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5. Hot-glue the metallic button to the inside of the flower. Hot-glue the silk flower to the front of the box. This completes the outside of the box.

Note: This is an extra step provided by guest, not shown on-air. Make four cards from cardstock to fit inside the box. For the first card, adhere a torn piece of the dress pattern to the Ruby Red cardstock cut to the dimensions to fit inside the box. Adhere a piece of black cardstock then glossy cardstock to the dress pattern piece.

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6. On the glossy cardstock, drop two very small drops of the gold metallic refill. Saturate a cotton ball with the rubbing alcohol and add two drops of each of the following re-inkers to the wet cotton ball; Real Red, More Mustard and Ruby Red. Dab the inked cotton ball on the glossy cardstock shiny side up. Wipe with a tissue in a buffing motion.

7. Stamp a black leaf into the middle of this glossy cardstock using Basic Black Classic Inkpad and a leaf rubber stamp. Thread thin black gingham ribbon through the marking tag and staple it to the recipe divider.

8. Place a metallic button under the tag using mini glue dots.

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9. For the second card use black cardstock and overlay a small piece of Ruby Red cardstock that has been stamped with French Script.

16. Stamp Toile Blossoms on a piece of Ruby Red cardstock cut slightly smaller than the black cardstock using a Versamark pad.

17. Sprinkle the image with black embossing powder over the embossing tray. Remove excess powder and heat the image with an embossing gun until glossy and raised.

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18. Apply bleach to parts of the image with an old blender pen and bleach. The red paper will turn white in the areas that have been in contact with the bleach!

19. Adhere the Ruby Red cardstock to the black cardstock.

20. Thread thin black gingham ribbon through the marking tag and staple it to the recipe divider.

21. The last card is made from black cardstock. Cut a piece of black cardstock to recipe divider size. Coat a piece of white cardstock with More Mustard ink cut slightly smaller than the piece of black cardstock and adhere it to the black cardstock.

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22. Apply thin strips of painter's tape to a piece of white cardstock. Randomly stamp Memory of the Heart stamps all over the white cardstock with black ink. Stamp on top of the painter's tape.

23. Use the sponges to apply different colors (Ruby Red, More Mustard, Close to Cocoa pads) on top of the stamped images in random order.

24. Peel off the painter's tape.

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25. Thread thin black gingham ribbon through the marking tag and staple it to the recipe divider.